The Criminal Justice System, Second Edition

This new edition offers clear, comprehensive and authoritative treatment of all aspects of the criminal justice system.

This second edition of The Criminal Justice System, formerly titled Criminal Justice, covers the most important aspects of The Criminal Justice System in the United States, including individual crimes, broad issues of law enforcement, prosecution, and punishment of wrongdoers. Designed to meet the needs of lay readers and students from middle school level and up, this three-volume set contains 620 articles that address the core issues - the six Cs of criminal justice - below. Attention is also paid to relationships between the realities of criminal justice and depictions of the subject in the media, with essays and sidebars on films, television, literature, and the media that compare fact with fiction.

The core issues of criminal justice are approached through a variety of perspectives:

Crimes: includes nearly 40 core articles on specific categories of crime - ranging from animal abuse and arson to vandalism and white-collar crime.

Codes: The framework of American law and significant individual pieces of legislation.

Constitutions: The content of the nation's foundation documents, their interpretation, and their impact on modern criminal justice.

Cops: The varieties of municipal, state, and federal law-enforcement agencies and the relationships among them, as well as their investigative work, specific functions, and arrests and other procedures.

Courts: The structures of the federal and state court system, the relationships among the courts, attorneys, judges and officers of the courts, and trial procedures.

Corrections: Sentencing, capital punishment, prison systems, prison conditions, and parole and pardons are covered in depth. Other broad subjects include business and commerce, drugs, juvenile justice, the media, military justice, rights issues, traffic law, victims and aspects of international justice.

Five indexes and a multitude of informative appendices round out the text. Designed for high school and undergraduate researchers, as well as public library patrons, this clear and authoritative source is an engaging resource for this high-interest subject area.